Just finished reading Venkatesh Rao’s newsletter “Breaking Smart”.

It is a breath of honest air even if it sometimes stinks of the fishmonger, hangovers, and last night’s tuna surprise. I know that doesn’t sound like much of a recommendation, but I can count on my hands the sources of honest,fearless ‘un-niceness’ and this is one of them. Buyer be aware, reader beware.

When I read Rao I always come away with new wrenches to cast into the works (or I pull out ones that Rao has tossed into mine).  For example, I have been thrashing around on my posts all week to come to terms in some effective way with the idea of TMI and filtering information.  Along comes Rao, molotov in hand, and he argues that filtering is an illusion depending upon which consensus is being manufactured. And,what’s even more problematic, with the “never-forgetting” character of the internet, nothing is ever thrown away.  It is just paid attention to differently.

Here are several of his other monkey wrenches:

Cupcake fascism
Derping
Manufactured normalcy

So, my way of curating Rao is to ask you to read his newsletter in its entirety, perhaps explore previous newsletters, consider the quote image below, and hyperlink out of here for a sidetrip of trippy and scary ideas. Nor narrowing the signal, am I. Thanks, Obama.